Length and quality
The issues of longevity and quality of life as related to Yoga,
seem to be important reasons why people start Yoga practices in
the first instance. In day to day life, the desire to live a
longer life is the reason behind many of our activities as we
pay attention to health and good life in many forms, all having
more or less a hidden agenda that of living longer. However,
longevity and quality of life are much related to one another as
two aspects of the same desire, the quality of life (as
intensity of life experience) being a qualitative progression of
longevity.

In normal circumstances, people pay more
attention to longevity, not being much aware on the issue of
quality. It is not so in Yoga, for here the main issue is the
quality of life experience that attracts also the longevity as a
component of quality of life. Yoga sees longevity as a
component, or more exactly a result of Yoga practices. The fact
that the yogic discipline allows the body to function better and
the mind to be under one's own control (that is a balanced way
of life without any doubt), has to lead to a longer span of life
of a practitioner. But, Yoga is primarily about the quality of
life, an issue that is outlined by the Yoga philosophy in its
very authoritative book known as Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

Quality of life
From the yogic perspective, the issue of quality of life has to
be seen from both material and spiritual angles. Yet, the
material angle of quality of life can be simplified by
considering it as an expression of the spiritual perspective.
Indeed, the spiritual side of quality of life takes credit for
the material side that becomes just a matter of a right attitude
towards material things. In own turn, the spiritual side of
quality of life has to be seen from body and mind perspectives.
The body issue is essential, as the harmonization of the body is
a solid foundation for addressing the issues of the mind that
becomes a the tool of extension, the organ and function through
which we experience the world.

In practical terms Yoga recommends the body
has to be cleansed of impurities, i.e. toxins, etc., for this
reason a multitude of Yoga techniques being used. The motivation
behind it is the fact that the toxins within the body do corrupt
the perception to certain degrees. It is primarily the quality
of perception that gives in fact the quality of life, is so Yoga
pays a great attention towards the body as a vehicle of sense
experience and host of mind experiences. Yet, here, the issue of
the mind is far more complex because it requires a certain
degree of abstraction to understand the mind experiences.
However, we cannot miss the point to mention that body
experiences, as sense experience, do end up ultimately as mental
experience. From the point of view of Yoga, what is essential is
that the experience of awareness known as Samadhi, is the focus
and end point of the entire practice. It can be said in simple
terms that in Yoga philosophy and practice, the quality of life
is determined by the level of awareness that leads to yogic
liberation known as Kaivalya.

Awareness
The end achievement of Yoga practice is in some form or another
described by people who have experienced it, as the experience
of awareness or the experience of being alert. A person
possessing such an awareness is known in Yoga as Drashta
("witness"), as is mentioned in Yoga Sutras. Here. the question
we might ask is: "Who is a witness and what the witness
witnesses?" The relevant yogic literature does mention that
awareness is a gradual process, as Yoga practices become more
refined and the practitioner becomes more alert towards the
environment and towards one's own person.

There is a wide spread idea in the Yoga
literature about awareness being a transcendent experience in
the sense that somehow the one who does experience it gets out
of this material world, but this is not true. Yoga awareness has
to be seen as an immanent experience for the fact that conscious
states are mental states therefore brain states. It will be more
appropriate to see consciousness, as qualia of
mental activities, that step ahead from animal to human species.
As such, Yoga does assume that the present Homo Sapiens has the
capacity to graduate into the Yoga consciousness as qualia,
but this ability is not a common feature of all of us. It
appears, as the yogic literature points out that only after
practicing advanced forms of Yoga, somebody is capable to
acquire such an awareness as a day to day feature of human
activities.

Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, talk about Drashta
("seer or witness") from the beginning (Ch.I-3). The issue seems
to be of an utmost importance, as the practitioner (as Drashta)
has to be now on the same site with the the one who is the
witness of all, i.e. the God (more often named in Yoga tradition
as Ishvara). According to Yoga, the object a witness witnesses
is the material nature, as manifestation of Shakti principle.
Yet most important is the fact that the witness does witness
himself/ herself, as every witness is part of the material
nature. Yet, this process of witnessing is not the ordinary way
of seeing actions and things within the world of nature (Prakriti).
According to Yoga, this kind of witnessing has a high quality of
perception.

Yoga claims that this the enhanced quality of
perception does not lead to a simple passive contemplation of
things or to a one-pointed directional concentration, but a
multilevel degree of perception. Naturally we might ask the
question of what is a multilevel degree of perception? Yoga
explains in simple words as being the capacity to be aware of
more than one thing at a time. Yet, this capacity appears to be
beyond the human capacity, but Yoga has proved that some people
can do it. Such an experience might be called a
three-dimensional awareness, for the fact that attention is
directed now in the entire surrounding space. Such a remarkable
ability has to be seen to be indeed a high degree of expressing
the qualia of human life.

How to increase
awareness
The Yoga practices normally do increase awareness to a certain
extent depanding on the kind of practice. The preliminary stages
of Yoga that are related to body optimisation, start with a
gradual elimination of body toxins and renunciation to various
addictions. At this stage, gradually the perception of the
senses increase in quality. By other practices like the use of
Pranayama ("control of the breath") Yoga says that there is a
sensation of awareness of the lightness of the body (called
Laghima), i.e. the heavy barden that hanged on the body appears
to be removed. Yet, as far as the tantric practices are
concerned, awareness can be obtained by elimination of sexual
ejaculation during sexual intercourse. Therefore, according to
Tantra Yoga, the real sexual pleasure can be experienced, in so
such a practice known as Maithuna Tantra becomes a training
towards obtaining awareness. Overall, it can be said that it is
only by a personal experience that somebody can discover an
inclination towards specific practices leading to the increase
of awareness by a proper training. However, the tradition
stipulates that a more refined awareness comes from advanced
practices, and at this spiritual stage an aspirant has to
consider having a Guru (spiritual preceptor) as a guide to help
overcoming the obstacles towards a refined experience of Yoga.

Siddhis as powers of
awareness and expression of quality
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali talks in Chapter III about various
Siddhis ("powers resulting from Yoga' or 'supernormal
abilities'). It is an exposition of what a Drashta can do with
his/ her abilities. Many people take the descriptions of Siddhis
ad literam, but the fact is that all the Siddhis are products of
the mind. It is the mind which assumes the form of that
particular action or thing by being empowered to do so. This is
where most of aspirants get confused to believe that the Siddhis
are powers of creation or destruction that can be acquired by
somebody and the role of God can be obtained by confronting the
laws of nature. It has to be clearly understood that all Siddhis
are powers of awareness, the one possessing them has to be seen
an out of ordinary person that is able to extend one's own mind
beyond unimaginable realms surpassing the ordinary imagination.
Yoga believed that one necessary quality for such a person has
to be what is known as Amritapurna ("filled with nectar"), that
is an advanced state of purity of mind as a result of body and
mind purification. A Drashta, according to Yoga has to be
considered having the Amritapurna quality.

The ability to experience awareness has to be
seen as a remarkable quality of expressing the human life. Such
a powerful is the experience that by an encounter with a Drashta
most people will feel that there is something special about such
a person, but are unable to know what could be. It will be easy
to observe the quality of experience of life in such a person,
but will be heard to know details like how intense his/ her
experiences of perception of life are. It is at this point where
we have to draw attention to the issue of longevity. The real
longevity is not given by the span of life, but by the quality
of mental experiences. The awareness of life, as is normally
experienced, is like a photographic shot, i.e. a slice at a
time. Every now and then, normally we have a slice of conscious
experience, that is a brief experience. It is not so for a
Drashta, according to Yoga, for the fact that the slices of time
are united in a continuous flow of awareness. Yet, some people
having this extraordinary ability that could hold on awareness
for hours or even during sleep.

Considering all of the above, it can be
certainly said that longevity in Yoga is a matter of quality of
experience. By deduction, it can be also said that a Drashta has
lived the equivalent of hundreds of years because of the ability
to have a higher level of awareness.